The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and do not constitute prior art.
Recent change of broadcasting system from analog to digital format reshapes the broadcasting system towards multi-channel environments of broadcast channels and higher quality of program audios and videos. The inventor(s) has noted that this enables hundreds of channels to cast a variety of information and to be available for convenient access by users. In addition, such a broadcasting system interworks with mobile communication networks to provide an advanced broadcasting environment. It facilitates two-way interactive television services which empower the viewer who had passively consumed the program offerings to become an active user capable of participating in the program or selecting a desired program to receive at a desired time. Further, while watching the broadcast, the user can now conveniently find and purchase the program's content tie-in products, e.g. auxiliary information on the character or hand props that appears on the program content.
Meanwhile, the inventor(s) has noted that in order for a user to use content-related information with the known interactive IPTV service, the extra information on the exposed tie-in products need to be preprocessed into metadata which in turn undergoes the required high-cost off-line work for inserting the metadata into the content (off-line editing). The inventor(s) has therefore experienced that such a service is prone to failure for a user to receive information on the user's interested tie-in products, diminishing the versatility of the interactive IPTV service.